Internship - Day 9.0

FHCOC Reconsidered

FHCOC in the stacks.

At the end of the day last week, I asked my supervisor to review my AT resource record for the Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) collection. As mentioned earlier, the collection does not have much variety in types of documents it contains, but is challenging in that the original order resembled the aftermath of 52-card pickup. But not to worry, the beauty of electronic finding aids is that original order can be maintained, yet the materials can be arranged intellectually for easy reference and easy retrieval.

First thing this morning, my supervisor shared her thoughts on the next steps for the FHCOC records. She made some excellent suggestions. This is the exact situation that makes an internship so valuable. I made my best effort at applying the archival theory I've learned from coursework and professional publications and then get to have it reviewed by an experienced archivist who gently makes excellent suggestions for improving the usefulness of the finding aid for research. Based on our discussion, I modified my series arrangement from:

• Court documents
• Regulatory documents
• Planning documents
• Newsletters

...to the following series and subseries...

• Legal documents
• Court documents
• Settlements
• Publications
• Regulatory documents
• Planning documents
• Newsletters

I was also reminded that DACS calls out for scope and content notes for "Each subsequent level of a multilevel description..." (3.1), so I added additional notes at the appropriate levels. We also determined it would be helpful to researchers if the folder labels were transcribed into AT. I generated a work ticket to delegate this task to a student assistant.

I concluded the day's tasks by labeling the document boxes, shelving them, updating the Stacks Locator, and updating the Accessioning Checklist and Processing Work Plan.